Technical Debt: Why Your AI‑Generated App Gets Harder to Change
At the start, every change feels easy. Weeks later, a small request takes days and simple fixes ripple through the app. That slowdown is technical debt: shortcuts you took to move fast that now require attention. Vibe‑coding and AI app generation accelerate progress early, which also means debt can accumulate earlier if you never circle back to tidy up.
How debt shows up for founders
- A quick copy tweak requires edits in several places
- A new field needs changes across multiple screens
- A bug fix breaks an unrelated flow
Debt is not a moral failing. It is the cost of speed. The key is to pay it down in small, visible steps while you keep shipping.
Why AI‑first teams see debt sooner
AI tools like Cursor, Claude Code, Lovable, and Bolt.new are great at shipping working drafts, not at maintaining long‑term structure. They can repeat logic, give things unclear names, or add new screens instead of reusing existing ones. None of these block a demo, but they make the third or fourth feature harder than it needs to be.
A simple plan to reduce debt without pausing features
- Name the top three sources of pain (for example, repeated forms, unclear names, missing loading states)
- Budget one tidy‑up task per feature you ship
- Consolidate shared pieces so one fix applies everywhere
- Keep a running list and cross items off as you land them
This approach turns cleanup into a steady habit rather than a big, scary rewrite.
When to consider a larger refactor
If changes keep breaking working flows, or if new features require edits in too many places, a short refactor may save time overall. Focus on the parts users touch most—onboarding, the main list, the edit flow—and make those predictable first. You will feel the speed return.
If debt already slows your team and you need a focused push to regain momentum, Spin by fryga can step in to prioritize, tidy the right pieces, and leave you with a codebase that’s easier to change.
Make debt visible and actionable
Create a living “top ten annoyances” list. Each item should state the symptom and the smallest fix that would improve it: “Three profile forms with different wording → move labels into one place,” or “Hard to find where sign‑in redirects → add a single decision point.” Review the list weekly and tackle one or two items alongside feature work.
Signs it’s time to pay more than the minimum
- A new feature requires edits in five or more places
- Onboarding or billing breaks when unrelated pages change
- Developers hesitate to touch a part of the app because “anything can happen”
These are strong signals to invest a short refactor. Focus on high‑traffic areas first so the payoff is immediate.
Case study: turning a slow area into a fast one
An internal admin page took a week for small changes. The team listed pain points, found three repeated versions of the same table, and a tangle of conditions that handled navigation. In two days they extracted a shared table, added clear names, and moved navigation decisions into one place. Future edits landed in hours instead of days. No rewrite required—just steady cleanup.